Taxpayers who were told they were saving an American company are now seeing their tax dollars flowing overseas by the billions. Funny how Obama didn't mention that in his multitude of GM commercials, debate thrashing or DNC convention speech.

Before the bailout of General Motors, it was well understood that the world’s largest automaker was losing huge amounts of money in the US and was staying afloat thanks to stronger performance in overseas markets. Since the bailout, however, that dynamic has been turned on its head. Thanks to a leaner manufacturing footprint, debt eliminations and steadily recovering sales, GM’s US operations have generated the lion’s share of the company’s profit since the bailout. And now, as the rest of the world economy slows, GM is spending more and more of its taxpayer-enhanced cash pile to shore up its faltering foreign divisions. In fact, according to an analysis of GM’s SEC filings, the company is likely to incur over $6.5 billion in losses and expenditures overseas in the 2011-2014 period, not counting over $1.6b in foreign potential legal liabilities or several other incalculable expenses that could add up to billions more. Not only are these expenses a challenge to GM’s overall financial health at a time when it also faces billion-dollar expenditures on pensions in the US, it shows the basic problem with national bailouts of global companies. Taxpayers who were told they were saving an American company are now seeing their tax dollars flowing overseas by the billions.

A full calculation of GM’s overseas expenditures since the bailout would be a daunting task indeed. Simply by scouring GM’s latest SEC filings, one finds no shortage of losses and one-time expenditures abroad. In fact, nearly every division of GM’s global empire has required some kind of assistance over the last year or so. These expenditures come in many forms, from tax assessments to investments, from bailouts to severance deals, and due to the complex nature of GM’s global finances they cannot be fully accounted with precision. But they all emphasize the reality that, after years of living off foreign operations, GM’s bailed-out North American division is now bailing out the rest of the world.

Without including potential liability costs or the more inevitable costs associated with Opel’s restructuring, GM has spent or lost in excess of $6.5b overseas in the last 30 months or so. With more losses and expenses coming, taxpayers can expect to see their investment in GM’s North American operations continue to support a steady flow of cash to GM’s overseas operations. Perhaps taxpayers should have been told that they weren’t simply bailing out an American automaker, but a variety of overseas operations as well.

GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced in a Wall Street Journal column Wednesday that his company has paid back its government bailout loan "in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule." He is even running TV ads on all major networks to that effect--a needless expense given that a credulous media is only too happy to parrot his claims for free. Detroit Free Press' Mike Thompson, for example, advises bailout proponents to start "warming up their vocal chords" to jeer their opponents with chants of "I told you so."

A New York federal judge may rule imminently on a case that could reverse the General Motors (GM) bailout and send the company back into bankruptcy, according to sources close to the case.

At issue is a backroom deal hatched by GM to fulfill the Obama administration’s demand for a quick bankruptcy, draining the automaker of nearly all of its cash on hand and leaving it in worse shape than it was when it collapsed in 2009.

One condition of GM’s bailout was to shore up its overseas subsidiaries. On the eve of entering bankruptcy, the company cut a $367 million “lock-up agreement” with several major hedge funds to prevent GM Canada from failing. The agreement ensured that GM could spin-off its liabilities to “old GM,” while using a multi-billion dollar bailout to create a new company.

All of that could be reversed if bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber reopens the process and rules in favor of old GM trustees, who are suing the hedge funds at the center of the lockout agreement.